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Lin Chong

Feisty and over-protective third wife of Peter Cook who would egg cars parked outside her house and had a feud with Private Eye

December 1 2016, 12:01am, The Times

Not Only . . . But Also: Peter Cook with his third wife, Lin Chong, at Mick Jagger’s 50th birthday party in 1993Rex Features

Had any of Peter Cook’s wives kept a marriage ledger, they would surely have written more entries in the “for worse” column than the “for better”. Each — there were three — had to put up with his mood swings, boorish drunken behaviour and a fairly constant stream of what he was wont to call his “tarts”. Bunny girls in fishnet stockings being an especial weakness.

He was a man who could say sorry, though. His third wife and widow, Lin Chong, would often come home after one of his bouts of beastliness to find a handwritten Post-it Note of apology. “Love you to bits”, it would say, or “Lin, my poppet of poppets xxx lucky hubby”.